Three Little Piggies Went to Bangkok

Bangkok is a city of experiences. It's a city where you can fulfil any perverse desires that you've ever harboured. In the area around Khao San you can drink 24/7 and if you then want to go home with a ladyboy and play any hole's a goal, you can do that. If you want to see a woman smoke a cigarette from her coochie, you can do that too.

Oh, I just hope that you don't want a beer from a 7-Eleven from 2pm 'til 5pm because you can't do that. You would need to go to a bar for a drink, because that makes way more sense.

In between Thai rum fuelled hangovers we found time to squeeze in a few experiences that are more to our tastes. 

You read about our fancy dinner at Nahm here but part of the reason why it didn't live up to our expectations was because of this meal. We kept this meal a secret from Matt saying we were just going to a good restaurant in Chinatown for dinner. 

We arrived at Tang Jai Yoo and walked in off the grimy street into probably the strangest dinner environment I'd ever been a part of (save for my first family dinner at the Hatch residence - now THAT'S a baptism of fire). We got shuffled around between tables by women all wearing little purple suits trying to secure us big tipping Westerners at their table. They clearly weren't very good judges of character.

These little women in purple suits would continue to mill around for the entirety of the meal, hovering over the table and watching us eat, at times would join in on the laughter of a joke that they'd miss and helped contribute to a v strange environment in a setting that was akin to an Asian grandmother's living room.

Anyway, it could have been many times weirder and that would have been fine given the meal that was on its way. As he was flicking through the menu Matt spotted the suckling pig on it and said, "wouldn't it be funny if we just ordered a whole pig!" To which I took great pleasure in telling him that that was exactly what we were here for. 

We started off with a plate of morning glory that even for just some leafy greens was a meal in itself. You don't make friends with salad however you do with a bit of morning glory. Wink wink.

But then out came the main event. BOOM. The whole suckling pig was presented in all of its beautiful, sexy, porky glory.

The pork entree consisted of taking the slivers of wafer thin, glass-like skin and making Chinese-style pancakes with it. The way the pork skin shattered around your mouth was similar to no other pork skin we'd ever had. The pancakes took us to a special, special place and we could've walked away from the meal very satisfied at this point. You wouldn't, but you could. 

Next thing the pig was taken away and a few minutes later out came the pork palate cleanser - the remaining bits of skin, the snout and the ears. Those cartilagey, chewy, essence of pork bits. Mmm...

By this point we were feeling pretty full, ready to settle the cheque, until a heaped pile of the rest of the Porky Pig was plonked down in front of us after having been chopped and deep fried with a fistful of garlic. We floated out of the restaurant inebriated by the little oinker who'd led us astray for the evening.

One of the newer experiences to hit Bangkok is the cat cafe. It's no secret that we're lovers of cats so the opportunity to sit down over a Thai tea and have twenty of the most pristine cats you've ever seen climbing about the place was an opportunity that was not to be missed. 

The purrrrfect way to spend an hour or so...

Back to the food experiences. This time, boat noodles. So named as only a small portion of noodles and blood thickened broth is ladled into a bowl which prevents spillage when someone's chowing down on a few bowls in a boat. 

The idea is that you order a heap of bowls between the table and see how many you can get through. We followed an order of 12 bowls with an order of nine. 

No prize for guessing who let down the team in number of bowls consumed. 

We squeezed in a few at Mikkeller Bangkok for good measure.

And, other than more boozing and some street food snacking, including a great tom yum and Nix grilling her own bits of pork face at a street side grill, that was the majority of our time in Bangkok gone...

Significant Insight from the Significant Other - Nahm Nomming

Ranked the best restaurant in Asia and number 13 in the world, we were pretty excited for our feast at Nahm. After attempting to explain where we wanted to go to numerous taxis and failing miserably, a Thai lady came to our rescue in the drizzling rain and was finally able to convey our wishes. We arrived half an hour late, severely under dressed and were at the mercy of epic judgement from both staff and patrons... Nothing new there, bring me the cocktail list!! Brim didn't help things by immediately knocking over our bottle of water and drawing more attention to us.

To start with we were given an amuse bouche of pineapple topped with a mixture of ground peanuts, shrimp paste and chilli - delicious!

Next we shared a selection of Nahm's canapés.

Salted threadfin perch with ginger, chillies and green mango on betel leaves.
Blue swimmer crab, peanuts and pickled garlic on rice cakes.
Grilled mussels - southern style.
Prawn and coconut wafers with pickled ginger.

All four were delicious with the rice cakes being my pick due to the uniqueness of the texture combination.

The main event was a soup, salad, curry, relish and stir-fry of our choice all placed on the table for an awesome shared feast.  

Coconut and chicken soup with deep fried garlic, green mango and chilli.
Salad of fresh river prawns with pork and Asian pennywort.
Grilled duck curry with Bangkok plum leaves.
Fresh tamarind relish with minced prawns, pork and chilli with braised mackerel, deep fried quail eggs and fresh vegetables.
Stir-fried pork with dried prawns, apple eggplants and chillies.

The winner for me has to be the soup, pure heaven in a bowl... Thick, sweet coconut milk infused with some kaffir and lemongrass and studded with the fried garlic and chilli... Delicious!  

The funniest moment of the night was Brim consuming a couple of the tiny green chillies from on top of the relish, after I'd warned they were hot. His cocktail was sculled, the water disappeared and he had to excuse himself to the bathroom three times to sort himself out!!! You just leave the chilli to the pros my love.

Then onto dessert.  

Green mango with green chilli sugar.  

Mixed fresh fruit.  

Custard apple in coconut cream with sesame biscuits.  

Pandanus noodles with black sticky rice, water chestnuts, tapioca and coconut cream. 

Our leaving thoughts were that whilst everything was fantastic - food was tasty, cocktails delicious, service was really friendly and helpful, excellent value for money - we couldn't really understand the number 13 world rating. In saying that, I would highly recommend it for anyone visiting Bangkok and I hope we'll be back one day.